Jack Yates is a poet, photographer, teacher and artist. He and his wife were friends of Hans and Lena Schwarz in Hampstead and Jack contributed to a number of the books on art practice written by Schwarz. Yates spent over 20 years as a teacher at the Camden Arts Centre, teaching figure drawing, portraiture, painting and experimental techniques. He was also a writer on topics such as collage.
Hanne Yates is an artist and teacher. She taught puppet-making at Camden Arts Centre for much of her career following a stint as a primary school teacher in her native Germany. She worked with paper-cutting in her artistic life. She co-wrote Collage (1981) with her husband whilst the couple also collaborated on Fragments, a graphic art and poetry magazine that ran for a number of years (1995 - 2004).
Note the unfinished quality to the painting, with the watch drawn in pencil, the sketch lines apparent and the missing head… Painted in his characteristic orange, a colour associated with strong emotions, what strong emotions might have caused Schwarz to portray Hanne in this way?